Strip Pan Wrinkle

by David Fletcher

  The lager cramming proved very agreeable, but not quite as sensational as the schooling in animal behaviour that was on offer as well. It was everywhere: elephants eating reeds in the channel directly below them, giraffes ambling along on the opposite bank – and one suckling its young – and now, not just hundreds of zebra visiting the river, but thousands of them. Because at this time of the year, just before the rainy season was about to arrive, the zebra were gathering to move eastwards deeper into the Makgadikgadi National Park, where soon there would be new vegetation to feed on, and occasional water to be found. But just now, before that rain had arrived, they were tied to this river, and they were making just short expeditions into the park, only to return every two or three days to fill up on water. And today appeared to be some sort of zebra happy hour, where every zebra from miles around was intent on drinking as much as he or she could, and these chaps not only lined the bank of the river but they also carpeted the approach to the river across from the lodge. Nelson had already told Brian and Sandra that (since the mid 1990s) this channel used to be a dry channel, and that the only water available was that which the lodge pumped to the surface – to attract wildlife for its guests. (And more on the phenomenon that transforms rivers into dry channels and back again into full-blown rivers later.) But now there was so much more of the wet stuff around, the zebra – and all the other animals – still remembered where the pumped waterholes used to be. And this is why they returned to this spot, and when happy hour was in full swing, in such gigantic numbers.

  Brian and Sandra could have stayed here watching this pageant of nature all afternoon. And, but for a mid-afternoon intermission and a few visits to the cold box, they did. They were still watching it as the sun began to sink and the browns and beiges of the scene before them became infused with pink and then with purple. It had been a memorable experience, and so memorable that, despite its lager component, it would be remembered very clearly. As would one of the discussions Brian had imposed on his wife, which had been engendered by the abundance of so many animals. And this concerned “threats to the world”…

  Brian had recently read about some symposium on the world’s future, where the attendees had been asked to determine the greatest threats that now faced our planet. And this is where Brian kicked off.

  ‘You know,’ he explained, ‘that they decided that the biggest threat of the lot was the accumulation of all that government debt. You know, the stuff they’re still pretending we can somehow pay off. And after that it was income inequality, and presumably what this will mean for social cohesion – as in the likelihood that people will start kicking the shit out of each other. And then connectivity… ’

  ‘What?’ interrupted Sandra.

  ‘Connectivity. You know, all the computer stuff and how it’s all interlinked… ’

  ‘That’s a threat?’

  ‘It is when you look at the incidence of cyber attacks these days – and the likelihood that they could screw everything up.’

  ‘Ah, I see.’

  ‘And then,’ continued Brian, ‘it’s failure of regulation… ’

  ‘Yeah… ’

  ‘And then global warming – and just squeezed in at the bottom, “population growth”’

  ‘Below all those others?’ shrieked Sandra (who was not given to shrieking). ‘They must be mad. And why “population growth”? Why not just plain “population”? Don’t they know this place is pretty over-stuffed as it is?’

  ‘My thoughts exactly,’ responded Brian. ‘But this list tells you something even more disconcerting about those who compiled it… ’

  ‘Which is… ?’ encouraged a genuinely engaged Sandra.

  ‘Which is that “threats to the world” are synonymous in the minds of these idiots with threats to us – us humans. As always, there seems to be a depressing inability for people to see anything in this world other than from their own perspective. I mean, ask those zebra over there what they think might be the greatest threat to the world, and I can guarantee it won’t be government debt or the failure of regulation. It will be one thing and one thing only: population – as in the bloated population of humans on this planet. And I’ll tell you something else as well. And that’s that most of those threats, if they ever come about, could well be seen as their salvation. The more dystopia they engender – with all the wars, carnage and population shrinkage that would inevitably follow – the more the zebra would be happy.’

  ‘You’re crediting these zebra with an awful lot of intellect. I’m not sure they’re really that clever.’

  Brian frowned.

  ‘I’m just using the zebra as an illustration. You know, as a representative of all life in this world, of which we are only a small but highly disruptive part. So I’m trying to explain what the greatest threats to the world are if you regard the world as the sum of all its inhabitants and not just as the sum of all those who think that the world belongs to them. Like all those tossers at that symposium.’

  ‘So what are you going to do about it? How will you teach them to see it from a zebra’s perspective?’

  Brian regarded his wife with a look of despair and resignation. Why did she always douse his futile reflections with a deluge of inescapable and pertinent pragmatism? Why was he so often left regarding his intellectual musings with a feeling of impotence or even paralysis? And that’s certainly how he felt now: powerless to pursue his point any further and more than ever in sympathy with all those zebra – who weren’t even given the opportunity to make a point in the first place. So he responded in the only way he could. With an indeterminate noise and a practised withdrawal.

  ‘Uhmmm… well you’re right, of course. I can’t. I don’t even know how I’d get myself invited to a symposium. And we’re all doomed anyway. Might as well have another lager.’

  This seemed to satisfy his wife and it even elicited a consolation. For Sandra presented him with an enormous smile and assured him that: ‘You’re quite right, Brian. It’s just that, as you say, we’re all doomed, and the quicker we are, the better for the zebra. And my money’s on that cyber stuff. Or maybe a virus… ’

  So, in the middle of the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had reinforced their bond of gloom and the world seemed a better place than ever, despite the existence of all those threats. And despite the prospect of another meal with the folks at Leroo…

  It couldn’t be ignored. They had to eat. So, a little after seven, Brian and Sandra left their chalet and, with their pre-arranged escort, arrived at the lodge’s main building for a pre-dinner drink. Their companions there were Fred and an apparently un-resentful Peter – and Fred had some news. It concerned their dinner. For it appeared that the lodge had received a late booking, and Brian and his wife would, this evening, be sharing a table not with any of the lodge’s staff but with a minister and his driver. Brian almost choked on his drink. How could he manage a whole meal with a man of the cloth without putting his foot in his mouth all the way down to his stomach? He was bound to say something inappropriate or just plain insulting. And who knew what the laws concerning blasphemy and heresy were in Botswana? He could end up spending the rest of his holiday reciting repeated Hail Marys. However, Fred then amplified his piece of news. It appeared that Brian would have to cope not with a minister but with a Minister, as in a member of the Botswanan cabinet, who was using the lodge as an overnight stop on his way to open a new library in a nearby village. So Brian would not have to concern himself with blasphemy or heresy, but instead, with any number of crimes against the state. He would have to be careful what he said.

  Fred went on to inform his guests that the Minister and his driver would be here for an eight o’clock start to dinner. And he also informed them that the Minister in question was the Botswanan Minister for Youth and Culture. This meant that Brian had almost three quarters of an hour to formulate a few polite enquiries in readiness for the meal. For he reckoned the more he could think of, the fewer real contributions he’d have to make at the
time, and the fewer chances he’d have of saying something out of order. So while Fred droned on about the role of men in Botswanan society (which, in his opinion, appeared to be that of domestic monarchs) and Peter ate the canapés, Brian set about his task.

  It was more difficult than he thought, and by five to eight all he’d come up with was a question about how the Minister divided his time between his two responsibilities (which was no more than: ‘Do you do Youth in the mornings and Culture in the afternoons?’), an enquiry as to whether the Minister was aware that in England, Youth and Culture are often mutually exclusive – and a third, a reserve question, as to whether he knew that by appending the word “club” to both his portfolios, he could end up with a popular British venue for listening to music in the Eighties and the name of one of the bands that might have been listened to in such a venue. (Although he thought it would be unwise to extend this one to a discussion about the New Romantics… )

  So, it was just as well that when eight arrived, it arrived without the arrival of the Minister and his driver, and it was therefore decided that Fred and Peter would play their parts instead. Which meant that rather than Brian having to dice with the perils of infractions against the state, he would now have to contemplate another journey into the realms of conversational dyspepsia – as in a disorder of the vocal chords leading to a weakness of speech, a loss of the ability to communicate and a depression in the will to make even the slightest contribution to any active debate. And no way would this trial by silence be made better by the fact that one of its participants was the shunned-for-the-day Peter, who by now must have been harbouring quite a sizable grudge.

  However, it was by no means a trial. Maybe it was to do with the choral singing by the assembled lodge staff before the event (and before the normal-formal introductions) or the frisson engendered by the delayed arrival of a Minister of State. But whatever it was, the meal was conducted at more a canter than a plod, and it even saw Fred admitting to a few lodge home-truths. Like, for example, that quite a few people found it very difficult to locate the lodge (!) and that many more, when confronted with that big park fence, turned around and gave up (!) and that maybe the lodge should make it a little easier for people to find it (!). All of which was reinforced in the most sensational way possible when Nelson approached the table to inform Fred that the Minister and his driver were lost. They were in a village by a river (the same village Brian and Sandra had unavoidably visited two days previously) and they could not find their way to the lodge.

  Brilliant! But it got even better. Because Nelson and Captain were immediately dispatched to bring in their stranded cabinet member but, in the process, they themselves got lost! A tree had fallen across the regular sand-track, and in taking an alternative track to the village, Nelson and Captain had lost it – the track, that is. And it wasn’t until nearly nine thirty that they made it back to the lodge with a very peeved-looking Minister and the Minister’s (marginally less obese) driver, who just looked as though he wasn’t expecting to keep his job. The trouble was that it wasn’t his fault. This lodge really was amongst the most well-secreted lodges in the whole of Africa, and it would have taken an official driver with a GPS implant to find it, and even then he would probably have hesitated at that fence. Even with a minister in the back seat – and even with his GPS throbbing almost painfully – he would have had his doubts. Just as Brian and Sandra had just two days before.

  But anyway, everybody who should have been at the lodge was now at the lodge, and Brian and Sandra were even treated to a greeting and a handshake by the Minister for Youth and Culture as he took his seat for his dinner. It would be with his glum-looking driver, and Brian would be denied the opportunity to ask him about his daily diary and to enlighten him on the contribution of Culture Club to the UK’s culture. But he’d get over it. Especially as he discovered, when he and Sandra were back in their chalet, that the lodge had installed in their room, an ice bucket, two champagne glasses and a bottle of bubbly – to thank them for their stay!

  Brian felt about six feet short of his normal six feet two inches. It seemed that the more horrible he was, the more he’d be proved to be wrong. Knock the conversational abilities of the local staff, impugn their facility to be other than solemn, conduct a hatchet job on their principal guide – despite none of these people having done other than everything for you – and you get your completely unjustified rewards. In this instance, in the form of an expensive bottle of effervescent joy, complete with an almost humble expression of their gratitude for your stay. (The attached card did seem to suggest that they were very relieved indeed that the lodge hadn’t been entirely empty, especially when the regional manager was in attendance.)

  Ah well… Brian and Sandra couldn’t manage bubbly at this time of night, not after what they’d already imbibed and with the prospect of a fairly early start in the morning. So Brian packed the bottle in his holdall while Sandra did some lastminute “sorting out”, and then he got into bed. There, he took a few minutes to assess their stay at this place and to remind himself that whatever shortcomings he’d identified in its performance, they were either a product of his own character defects, or, if in any way real, they paled into insignificance when compared with its paradise situation. And furthermore, they were predominantly in that first category; they were predominantly a function of his own personality. Yes, he had to admit it, the only real shortcomings presently in residence at Leroo La Tau were all his own. That’s to say, his jaundiced views (on anything and everything), his sourness, his propensity to see the worst of all worlds, and his tendency not to give people the benefit of the doubt. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he thought that he should get himself along to one of those stupid symposiums. And then all he’d have to do was to be himself. That way, he’d be so at odds with the enthusiasm, optimism and general “can do” attitude that infest such events, that he’d soon stand out from the other delegates. And when, by standing out so much, he had their attention, he could then use the moment to give them a view of the world from the perspective of a zebra – and thereby maybe change their conclusions. (Oh… and if his poisoned character didn’t succeed in securing their attention, then there were always his Speedos.)

  19.

  It was nine o’clock in the morning and time for Brian to rekindle his regrets of the previous evening – time for him to remind himself of what a bastard he’d been. And this was achieved with consummate ease by his receiving a send-off from the assembled staff of Leroo La Tau that was not only effusive but also genuinely moving. It was quite hard to bear. And after this, Peter boarded one of the lodge’s vehicles and kindly led Brian and Sandra along a sandtrack that brought them directly to the main road without their passing through that famous village. And Brian checked; where the track met the road, there really was no signpost or any other indication of the lodge’s existence. Even a couple of tethered balloons would have helped…

  But no. He’d heaped far too much criticism on Leroo La Tau already, and hadn’t he just learned his lesson all over again? And furthermore, he now had more immediate matters to deal with, like finding his way to Maun – and avoiding all those donkeys.

  There were more of them than ever, and far more of them than there were cattle and goats. And not only were they a continual concern – if not an actual hazard – but they were also something of a mystery. Because Brian had now established that the Botswanans rarely, if ever, ate them, rarely used them for other “animal products”, and only infrequently used them as beasts of burden. They just seemed to own them, and simply left them to graze at their leisure and generally live out their donkey lives with the minimum of human intervention. It was all very odd, and Sandra’s suggestion that they were in high demand during the nativity play season didn’t convince him at all. Nor her suggestion that there’d been a mix up on a massive order for “monkeys”, and these ubiquitous “donkeys” were the result of a massive returns programme. Perhaps it was just a desire on the
part of Botswanans to retain a reminder of the past – when they would have used their donkeys extensively. A bit like the way Brits hang on to old red phone boxes back home, even when they’ve been stripped of their phones. Anyway, he would never discover for sure, just as he would never establish whether there were more donkeys in Botswana than there were people. (Even though he was sure that he’d now seen about twice as many four-footed nibblers as he had two-footed citizens.)

  However, despite the uninterrupted succession of Eeyores along the road, the journey to Maun was pretty straightforward. After only a couple of hours of driving, the emptiness of Botswana, broken only by the occasional settlement of traditional roundels, was giving way to the signs of something rather more packed with people. There were some larger houses, some workshops and warehouses, and then, at the bottom of a shallow incline, the unmistakable view of a veritable metropolis. Only, of course, this was a Botswanan metropolis, so, although it was the largest town that Brian and Sandra would encounter on their entire trip around this country, it was no bigger than somewhere like Daventry. Although, unlike Daventry, it was renowned for being the “Gateway to the Okavango”. And its gateway status was why Brian and Sandra had come here, and why they’d flown here three times before (from Windhoek). It really was the only place where one could gain access to the Okavango Delta, which, without wishing to exaggerate, is probably one of the most desirable places in the world to which one would want to gain access. And this is because the Okavango Delta is simply magnificent – and unique.

  Around two million years ago, the Kavango River, which flows south-eastwards from the highlands of central Angola, probably joined with the waters of the mighty Limpopo and made it to the sea. But at some point those pesky tectonic plate movements stuck their oar in and the Kavango got itself diverted into the Kalahari Basin. Right up to a few thousand years ago, this meant that it ended up in a huge lake that covered the (recently visited) Makgadikgadi Pans. But silting, together with a little more uplifting of the land to the east, caused this lake to disappear and a new basin to form that now traps the majority of the river’s flow. Indeed, only a tiny percentage of it finds its way out of this basin and into the Thamalakane River (which runs through Maun) and an even smaller percentage of it makes it even further to the Boteti River (the river which runs past Leroo La Tau and towards those Makgadikgadi Pans). And this basin is, of course, the “container” for the Okavango Delta, a huge fan-shaped area in the north-west of Botswana where every year nearly nineteen billion cubic metres of water arrive from Angola across the Caprivi Strip – for the majority of it to be absorbed by the sand or by the dry thirsty air.